Proclaimer Blog
The New Testament use of the Old (4)
4. Prophetic fulfilment
One of the more obvious ways the NT uses the Old is in terms of prophetic fulfilment. This is essentially the same point as yesterday. There we saw how stories can have a certain trajectory. It’s no coincidence that many of these stories come from books Jewish people call ‘former prophets.’ And the so the stories often work in terms of prophetic fulfilment.
Nevertheless, prophetic fulfilment does tend to be more direct. We often get markers in the text, “as the Scripture says” or “to fulfil what was written.” Sure, there will often be immediate fulfilment first. But any OT sermon that does not follow the NT trajectory in this case is sadly lacking. Sometimes that will be obvious; other times more thinking will be required. But, a sermon which takes a servant song from Isaiah and applies it only to Cyrus is clearly short changing a congregation.
There’s no substitute for knowing your Bible at this point. However, two resources I’ve found immensely helpful are (an older one), The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and (a newer one), Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old.